Summary of Baird RFID Monthly for May

Baird has released its May report. The sixteen-page document is a worthwhile read for anyone requiring an overview of the industry's last 30 days. For those without time to do so, we have reprinted here the report's summary.

May 25, 2006—Wealth and asset management firm Robert W. Baird & Co., known to most simply as "Baird", has released its RFID Monthly for May. Baird has given RFID Update permission to reprint the Key Developments section (below), which offers the report highlights. For those wanting more detail, the complete sixteen-page document is available free here. The report includes its usual matrix of primary RFID providers on page 13, and following are the Key Developments:

Good Tradeshow Momentum. We attended the RFID Live tradeshow during the week of May 1 and our view remains largely unchanged from the RFID World show from February: increased industry optimism that RFID is moving forward. Total show attendance was over 2,300 with nearly 1,200 being end users. We viewed this as strong attendance given that Wal-Mart held a similar show for suppliers and RFID vendors the week before. Most participants indicated that they saw very good end-user interest at their exhibit booths on the first day of the show.

Next Tier Wal-Mart Mandate Suggests Increased Requirements. We learned that as part of its vendor show during the last week of April, Wal-Mart articulated the requirements for its next 300 vendors under mandate in January of 2007. To foster a uniform effort, minimize "bugs," and reduce non-compliance, Wal-Mart is requiring a live test run from these suppliers this October. We view this as an indicator that Wal-Mart will likely increase pressure on its consumer product supply base throughout the year. Recall, we had heard at RFID World that Wal-Mart would be increasing mandate pressure.

EPCglobal to Develop Item-Level Standard. Upon insistence from the pharmaceutical community, EPCglobal announced the formation of two new standards working groups for item-level tracking. The two groups will work in parallel to evaluate item-level tagging requirements at HF and UHF. The HF Air Interface Group will concentrate on expanding current UHF Gen2 standards into the HF band, largely for healthcare applications, while the UHF Working Group will focus its efforts on developing security enhancements to current UHF Gen2 standards. EPCglobal will host a meeting in Chicago the week of May 29 to continue the process.

Increased Legislative Pressure on Pharma. Sen. David Vitter introduced a bill which would require the incorporation of counterfeit-resistant technologies into the packaging of prescription drugs in order to authenticate the pedigree of the drugs. The bill specifically calls for requiring "radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging technology, or similar trace and track technologies that have an equivalent function" on packaging of any prescription drug. This bill is similar to the U.S. House of Representatives version (H.R. 4829), profiled in the March 2006 edition of RFID Monthly.